PASADENA – Nearly a quarter of the way into the current fiscal year, the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees voted this week to adopt a final budget for 2009-2010, with the threat of mid-year cuts from the state still looming.

The trustees scrambled Wednesday night to adopt the budget, which is due by Oct. 15, but more cuts are likely as the year goes on, said Richard van Pelt the interim vice president of administrative services.

“We’re just all waiting for the other shoe to fall,” board president Jeanette Mann said. “There is so much smoke and mirrors in the state budget.”

So far the general fund for the college dropped roughly 4 percent from $122.9 million to $117.9 million this year.

Students at the college have already seen the effects of the cuts in their classes this fall.

The college is offering 2,404 classes this semester – down 23 from last fall. The remaining courses – especially core classes such as English or math – are 6 percent over capacity, college spokesman Juan Gutierrez said.

However the winter intersession, which was temporarily canceled in July, still offers fewer classes – 316, compared to 598 last year.

No full-time faculty or classified staff were laid off, but several open positions remain unfilled, he added.

Federal stimulus money, which has been instrumental in backfilling cuts to K-12 schools, was not part of the college’s adopted budget. The state’s community college system was slated to receive $130 million, but the most recent estimate is just $37 million.

While the board adopted the budget unanimously, trustees still expressed lingering doubts about the details.

Mann said she felt rushed to approve the budget that trustees received on Sept. 11.

“In five days, it’s really, really hard to understand the finished product,” Mann said. “I have a lot of questions, but they weren’t serious enough that I didn’t want to approve the budget.”

The board has been trying to shape the budget in a year rife with uncertainty, Mann said.

Figures coming from the state were constantly shifting, she said, and the board had trouble getting accurate budget numbers from the college’s administration.

“We kept asking the administration as early as February to get information on the budget and we didn’t get anything until July – that’s when we had concerns about the way the budget was going,” Mann said.

The problems came to a head at the board meeting in July. The board voted to cancel winter intersession only to reinstate it a few weeks later when they found enough funds.

At that same meeting, students showed up to protest cuts that shut down a social sciences tutoring center. Mann said the board was frustrated that they had to learn about cuts from students.

Trustee Hilary Bradbury-Huang joked at Wednesday’s meeting that though she approved of the budget, board members were hesitant because they were still suffering from “post-traumatic stress” from that meeting.